If you are Elle Fanning, young, beautiful, talented, and playing a young, beautiful and talented American movie star, it might not be as easy as it looks.

Fanning, 27, is the lone American in Joachim Trier’s award-winning, English-language Norwegian drama “Sentimental Value,” the Grand Prix winner at Cannes last May and Norway’s entry for an Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature.

Sweden’s Stellan Skarsgård, 74, stars as Gustav Borg, a world-famous filmmaker with difficult relationships with his daughters.  Life becomes more complicated when he decides to make a very personal film – about their personal lives.

Trier catapulted Norway’s Renate Reinsve to international stardom in his “The Worst Person in the World” which won her a BAFTA nomination and the Cannes Best Actress prize.

Nora Borg, written specifically for her, is the bitter daughter who rejects the leading role in her father’s new comeback film.

Which is how Fanning’s ambitious but undervalued Rachel Kemp meets and impulsively accepts Gustav’s offer to step up and star.

Fanning lists “Worst Person” among her favorite films. “I didn’t expect there would be a Joachim Trier role in my future — but he was on the bucket list,” she explained.

“Then I heard there was this part of an American actor — and I wanted it really badly.”

“A profound piece of writing,” she calls it. “So moving with the challenges and layers of my character!”

An actor mirroring life and art by playing an actor, “Rachel Kemp is a very particular, certain type of actress. Joachim and I talked about her. She could have slipped into this vapid Hollywood cliche we’ve seen, so it was important to flesh her out.

“There were things that showed me we’re not at same point. She’s more lost. She knows she has talent — and no one has seen her and brought it out of her.

“I’m playing someone who in real time realizes during the making of this movie in Norway that she’s miscast. Not in the way an audience might see it but in a different way.

“So, she does a brave thing: She walks away from a part she wants badly. Because she knows she’s not right for it.

“When we see Renate later in the role, it works because it’s her personal experience.

“For Rachel she’s excited, she’s crying! But it’s a truthful place Rachel is coming from.

“And it was a real challenge to do that: Do someone who’s the catalyst of things and be part of this family drama.

“And still, she comes out hopeful and actually found herself. I think she will go on to be a great actress. She maybe just doesn’t have the confidence to do so now.”

“Sentimental Value” is in theaters now

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, left, and Elle Fanning in a scene from “Sentimental Value.” (Kasper Tuxen/Neon via AP)